Racing type video games have been popular for many years. It has been well known in such video games to permit a player to capture racing data indicative of the player's racing performance and race against captured “ghost” data in subsequent races.
For example, in Mario Kart 64, the game program captures ghost data as a player's vehicle races around the track recording vehicle location information at each point in the performance. Once the race is complete, the player can choose to race on the track again and compete against a “ghost” car whose position is dictated by the player's previous performance based on stored “ghost data.”
Certain prior art video games have permitted one player to give ghost data to another player, so that the two players can race “against” each other, even though they aren't racing in real time. For example, the first player may copy ghost data to a memory card and give this memory card to a second player. The second player may use such a memory card in his or her own game system and race against the first player's ghost data at any time.
It has also been known for ghost data to be uploaded and downloaded from a database via the Internet. See, for example, the Microsoft X-Box game “Project Gotham Racing II.”
The present illustrative exemplary embodiments provide enhanced methodology and apparatus for use in a multi-player video game for generating an array of user selectable options for choosing real or computer generated users to play with and/or compete against.
In one illustrative embodiment, in a simulated multiple driver racing game application, the user of a computing device is presented with an option for selecting any of various “ghost data” packages for downloading over a communication network such as the Internet. For example, the user may be presented with the option of selecting one of an array of ghost data packages to race against such as the top five players with highest scores, the top five buddies of the user with highest scores, five buddies with scores similar to a user's own score, the top five performances as rated by others, teams/groups of various varieties, the best performances of the top five recent competitors, and the top five ghost data that best matches the player's best ghost data.
With respect to providing races against selectable teams or groups, in an exemplary embodiment, rather than downloading the ghost data of one player, or combining individual performances of multiple players according to a performance-based criteria, a team or group package combines individual ghost data collected from the performances of multiple players who were playing the same instance of a game, interacting with each other in real-time on the same race course at exactly the same time. By selecting such a package involving a number of users playing the same game at the same time, the stored ghost data relating to such game play will involve interaction of ghost vehicles (which typically would not occur if ghost data were retrieved based on different races on the same course). Thus, since the ghost data reflects collisions that occurred in a real race, a subsequent display of such ghost data will depict collisions among ghost vehicles.
In accordance with an exemplary embodiment, the video game system enables a user to download as one data set or unit, multiple ghost data packages from which to choose.
In accordance with at least one exemplary embodiment, the user may select a ghost package of various combinations of players that a user has registered as his or her buddies. The registration occurs in a fashion which permits multiple players to be conveniently authenticated as buddies of each other and permits a wide range of competitive races to be conveniently selectable.
The user may view a selected performance on the user's computing/video game system while controlling the camera viewpoint in the race, or the camera may automatically follow one of the players. The user may alternatively choose to race against the competitors selected via a chosen ghost package.
It should be understood that the methodology for selecting other players/buddies/teams/groups with whom to play and/or to compete against extends beyond racing game applications—even though the illustrative embodiments focus on racing game implementations. It is contemplated that the methodology described herein may be applied to a wide array of simulated activities including, but not limited to a wide array of video games, where the performance of multiple users/buddies are recorded and stored and used subsequently in a simulated multiple user activity. For example, the methodology described herein may be used to select a myriad of combinations of friends/relatives/celebrities against whom to compete in activities ranging from vehicle racing, flight simulation, track and field activities, poker, adventure games, and other games/simulated educational competitions, where multiple player competitions have heretofore been successfully employed.
In accordance with at least one illustrative embodiment, a simulated race in a video game console-based system or hand-held gaming machine initially occurs with objects and a playing field of relatively low graphics complexity, limited by constraints of the game system's processing power and the associated limited number of polygons that can be processed per second, the resolution of the screen, etc. A more powerful rendering of such objects/playing field thereafter takes place by, for example, a more powerful, server computer, after the ghost/performance data has been collected and uploaded.
Such a more powerful rendering can be compiled into, for example, an Audio Video Interleave (AVI) video file format that players can either view on a website or download to a console for viewing (if the console is capable of playing back AVI files). In accordance with such an exemplary embodiment, cars and backgrounds which are rendered using graphic models with very high polygon counts are used to replace their original recorded simulated race counterparts.
A user may then view ghost data performance in very high resolution. If desired, the background and cars may be, in accordance with one exemplary embodiment, completely replaced with a different background and cars in a different setting, although the player's performance (based upon the original ghost data) would, for example, remain substantially the same.
For example, as will be described herein, if a Nintendo DS is utilized as a hand-held gaming machine for playing a racing game, graphic objects of a certain complexity may be handled, e.g., one hundred to five hundred polygons per car. Once player performance data has been uploaded via the Internet to a server, the server may process the ghost data and re-render the race with completely different objects. In such an illustrative embodiment, the racing track/terrain remains substantially as was utilized in the Nintendo DS. Although the original track may remain intact, the background rendering may be radically different. For example, a server rendering may change the original racing locale from a desert location to a tropical resort location. In accordance with such an embodiment, an original two hundred polygon model of a simple go-cart may be completely replaced, for example, with a five thousand polygon simulated Ferrari.
The server's rendering of such data need not be done in real time which eliminates one of the constraints from completing an extremely high quality rendering. The same movements of the vehicle through space would be maintained as occurred in the original race on which the ghost data is based.
A server may, for example, render the race data in a movie MPEG file and download the movie file back to the originating Nintendo DS. Alternatively, the rendering could be placed on a website for accessing by other authorized users. For example, members of a racing team or a group of friends may wish to see their race rendered in such an extremely high quality form.
This illustrative embodiment may be combined with the various embodiments described above and herein so that multiple ghost data packages are rendered into one AVI file. This embodiment likewise has a wide range of applications extending well beyond racing applications.
These and other features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.